AUGUSTA, Ga.  He made up his mind for good on No.
1 Thursday, as he missed putt after putt, and realized sunset had come.

"I knew what kind of writing was on the wall," Arnold Palmer
would later say of a four-putt double bogey that began an 89. The last convincing
he needed, for a decision he had pondered for months.

"Tomorrow will be it," he said. "I just think it's time.
My golf has been pretty lousy as of late."

And so Palmer will say goodbye to the Masters on Friday
with a last round, a last walk up No. 18, a last smile, a last wave to the galleries
of Augusta that have given so much to him for 48 Aprils, and he back to them
in return.

"As someone said to me, 'How do you account for this large
gallery when you're not playing worth a damn?' I said, 'Well hell, the ones
I don't know by their first names are relatives.'

"There's no question, I love Augusta."

But love can't stop the clock. The masses of Augusta adore
him  he stopped and talked to many spectators as he played Thursday, like
a political candidate on the stump rather than a legend at twilight.

But do they wish to see him shoot 89 anymore?

No, it was the right call, correctly reading the facts
of life as he would the break in a putt.

He is 72 and now it is hard labor on a golf course made
longer and tougher and more unforgiving, even for the young guns who could be
his grandsons.

He has not made the cut or broken par here since 1983.
His play Thursday suggested it would only get worse. His round included six
bogeys, four doubles and a triple.

"I practically look at the young people playing the game
today," Palmer said, "and I think I hit the hell out of it and I look up and
they're 100 yards in front of me. That's a pretty good message right there."

A reasonable score Thursday might have relit a fire, made
Palmer think twice. It is hard to let go, and should it be any other way?

"I'm not any different than most people," he said. "I like
to think there's always a couple more good rounds in my body, and maybe there
are."

But there haven't been any here for a long, long time.
And this one was 17 over par.

"That is enough of a push to push me over the edge," Palmer
said. "To say enough is enough."

Then there was the purge this year, when Masters officials
asked that elderly past champions Doug Ford, Gay Brewer and Billy Casper no
longer play, delivering the point by post.

"I didn't want to get a letter," Palmer said.

So he will get one more day. If fate has any heart, he
will play well. He will be young again for four hours. And he will birdie No.
18, as the roar carries to Savannah.

"Maybe I can have some fun. Whatever I do, I'll enjoy tomorrow
(Friday)," he said.

"It'll be emotional, but those things happen.

"I'm not sad about it. I'm sad that I'm not playing well
enough to play.

"There are some things in life that are inevitable. I guess
that I'm facing that right now."

He talked Thursday of Masters memories, all of them from
his golden age in the 1950s and early 1960s, when he won four times and the
grounds of Augusta shook with Arnie's Army.